At Productive Organizer we have always talked about the importance of a budget. A sound budget plan builds good money habits, keeps you from making bad ones and build confidence.

We reviewed You Need a Budget (YNAB) not too long ago on this blog and while we really like how it is able to do envelope budgeting well, you still need to pay for it.

The free ones just are not sophisticated enough for the level of planning needed. Well there is GNUCash but that is tooo sophisticated for most people.

That is why I am happy to discover MVELOPES. It is an online budgeting portal. It used to be subscription based (USD $9 a month) but have since added a freenium component.

What are the advantages of Mvelopes?

In my opinion its pretty well rounded for the free package

• The free plan restricts you to 4 accounts, and 25 envelopes and do not have the debt repaying and bill payment functionality. That doesn’t sound so bad unless you have more than 4 banking accounts. 25 envelopes is alot for a starter to work with. Hell I couldn’t even cross 20 envelopes. As international investors we do not appreciate the integration to institution that much but think US folks with more accounts may want think of upgrading should they like it
• It most single use case is to perform envelope budgeting
• It allows recurring transactions
• It allows splitting your transactions into more than one envelope
• Its repository is in the web which means that you can review it anywhere you want
• Its for both android and ios app to enable easy review and input of transactions on the go

How to budget to help you save money with Mvelopes?

These budgeting applications can be pretty daunting. But at Investment Moats, I have written a detail step by step guide to how you can make use of Mvelopes to get started in planning.

It is totally FREE and you will not find a more comprehensive guide and review to use Mvelopes then over there.

Money Saving Advice – How to Budget with FREE online budgeting app Mvelopes

So what is your budgeting tool? Do you use a spreadsheet? What do you like and hate about it? Tell us!

A lot of friends was managing their money quite well while in school. When they step to work, things gets more difficult. The temptations in life risen exponentially. The responsibilities risen exponentially as well.

They ask me how come I can still get a grip on things. I told them one thing: Don’t get married.

Jokes aside, I have always been doing what I figured out 5 years ago: Have a money plan, or a plan to make sense of it. I have a plan on what life goals I want to achieve, break them up into envelopes and just keep funding them and make a hobby out of them.

You can make use of this primer on how I carry out envelope budgeting with Quicken.

For friends and relatives who are in a fix and in need of an inspiration you can help them by passing this infographic to them

What is your plan to get the most out of your money?

The best measure of productivity is how much money we make. It’s the single most important factor that determines how productive we are. If you have a job, it’s your responsibility to complete the money making tasks.

If you don’t know what money making tasks are, you have to ask your boss that question! It’s that simple. To sum it up, every workplace has just a couple of money making activities, you have to know what they are.

Anything else, which is a fun thing to do, seems cool or is simply easy to complete, is an utter waste of time. Checking emails, succumbing to distractions and completing fun tasks is going to get you nowhere!

If you are employed it is kinda easier, you will in most of the time know what your product is. It gets trickier if you are running your own business or you are freelancing. Measuring productive, money making work is critical factor in evaluating your productivity.

What is the product of your work? When you know the answer to that question, you can proceed from there and make a plan. If you have clients and you are billed by the hour in order to produce results. It is true that any time you work, will earn you money.

But if you keep clients best interest and do the things that are going to create them the most value and make profit for them, than those are the tasks that you should be focused on. If you can’t figure out yourself what those activities are, asking a question is always a good idea.

Asking the good questions is always spectacular idea. Asking the right questions will establish you at your employer or client as a bright individual which knows what are the important aspects of their business. Smart questions alone scored me all of my jobs and even more clients.

The end result of smart questions is clarity on the task at hand. When you know what kind of tasks deliver the results you will be motivated only to complete those tasks.

[First part: Why I switch to a standing desk setup >>]

It would seem that I can get adjusted to working in a standing position. Essentially, I don’t expect to work as much as when I am in office.

Having said that, it can be really tiring to work standing. I realize that I have a tendancy of wanting to lean my pelvic area on the desk.

To circumvent this I may need to do some hip rotation while I am typing.

What do you guys think of my setup?

To Do list when used with a well honed process daily is a very productive tool. And the people behind MyLifeOrganized (MLO) have been creating their task management app since the Windows Mobile days.

Windows Mobile

Back then, we don’t have things like Getting Things Done methodology to guide us, but MLO have the best task management solution in my opinion.

Windows Mobile allow tree style hierarchical views, so they were able to create a task and subtask concept which was rare in that days.

To supplement that, they have a very well thought out hierarchical to do list which you can tag due dates, notes and contexts. You can sync this with your windows mobile app.

Playing catch up

What MLO did not anticipate was how well the iPhone and iPod took off and herald a wave of to do list apps like the ones on my side bar.

A very good app rest too much on its laurels and miss a ton of good revenue.

About a year ago, I visited MLO’s homepage and realize that they were frantically churning out their solution for each smartphone platform. I anticipate that they really hired a lot of developers on different platforms to execute this because unlike the makers of Wunderlist who are coming up with their own ubiquitous app Wunderkit, MLO managed to deploy beta versions at a really break neck speed.

So how is their offering?

iPhone MLO

The iPhone app costs USD $9.99 which is the price for all the premium To Do list apps such as 2Do and ToDo.

The thing everyone likes about MLO is that they contain the most essential widgets for task management:

1. Task Description, Notes, Due Date, Status
2. Repeating or Recurring Tasks
3. Sub-tasking or parent child concept
4. Tagging

For the iPhone App, they brought over the hierarchical concept. You can create unlimited levels of subtasks.

What you can do on the windows and windows mobile applications you can do it on the iPhone app.

Most of the reviews are from people that have used the windows version of MLO and the reviews are mixed. To most it’s a godsend to be able to carry out the same way of doing things on the iPhone.

For others they cannot understand the complicated interface and they deemed it as complicated and unstable.

iPad MLO

The iPad version costs USD $19.99. That is steep. It essentially is priced in the range of Omnifocus, which is the one David Allen recommends.

It basically does what the iPhone app does but because iPad has a more affordable screen real estate, it makes a splendid project planning tools.

The great thing is it is similar to that of the iPhone app. Unlimited hierachy, repeating, contexts, places and many many different views for people that does things differently

Android MLO

There isn’t a pricing on the Android version. It is Beta currently but soon it will be selling at USD 9.99. That is bloody steep. [Google Play >>]

Although this is a fully featured BETA version of MyLifeOrganized, some features are still in development. You can use the beta version for free until the final product is released. Once the final version has been released, you will have the choice of continuing to use MyLifeOrganized for free in Lite mode, or purchasing a license key to unlock the full feature set. In either case your data will be preserved after the upgrade. Please use our forum for feedback, since we cannot respond on Android Market.

I am an Android smartphone user currently and MLO have been a god send on the Android.

For one, there isn’t a to do list that provides unlimited subtasking like MLO. There are many apps that syncs to Google Tasks but Google Tasks is very limited. For one you cannot create repeatable tasks.

The example above you can see that I have an “Area of responsibility” in Work, follow by a short project writing a report.

The most useful thing is that I can order the list by cutting tasks and pasting task in the right order.

Kudos to MLO for providing this.

Having start and end dates are what is required for project management. This would filter out tasks not expected to start soon.

You can also change a task into a project and assign multiple contexts, setting subtasks in order.

You can relate contexts with those that belong within another. Take Office Computer. If you tag something as that it will appear if you filter by Office as well.

MLO provides a lot of interesting options. For each tree of tasks if you complete all the tasks you can have MLO create another repeating tree of subtasks.

For projects that you want to reuse, MLO allows you to reset in two ways.

Overall, you would find the settings to be so flexible even if the work flow doesn’t fit you outright, you can tweak it to your liking.

The Android MLO have so many views! You can start drafting by Outline or Projects then filter by which tasks are active at certain places, people or time duration.

And if you think those are the only views that is available to you, check out more.

MLO also offer widgets that you can embed on your home screen

Overall, the people love it.

Blackberry MLO

By now you would know the Blackberry app is more or less similar to the others. The blackberry version costs USD $14.99. Steep.

But I think it is worth it because there isn’t much GTD application that does unlimited subtasking like MLO on blackberry.

MLO Cloud Sync

How does MLO make it ubiquitous? By getting you to subscribe to a cloud sync service.

This would allow you to sync over the air with each device.

The service cost on an average

• $25.95 for 2 years
• $14.95 for 1 year
• $9.95 for 6 months
• $5.95 for 3 months
• $2.95 for 30 days

I have not tried this service but if you subscribe for long $1.25 per month doesn’t sound expensive.

I hope that this would allow me to sync an iPad with an Android smartphone.

Conclusion

MLO have the most comprehensive solution. Back a few months I wrote what is the use cases you need for a task management solution.

1. Task Description, Notes, Due Date, Status
2. Repeating or Recurring Tasks
3. Sub-tasking or parent child concept
4. Tagging
5. Extensible API
6. Ubiquitous

MLO provides all except the extensible API. That way you cannot grow it as a platform.

MLO essentially is a closed network and they force you to subscribe to it, somewhat like Microsoft.

What I find intolerable is that every piece of app cost a lot. If they want to sell this platform to users they would have make it cheaper for the users.

Say you need the Windows app and the iPhone app to sync with each other that will set you back $45.95 + $9.99 + $14.95 = $70.89

That is expensive. And if I believe more so then Omnifocus.

I find the solutions very good, but I just cannot except the price.

- As the New York Times recently wrote, sitting kills.
- In a study that tracked over 17,000 Canadians for 12 years, researchers found that people who sat more had a higher risk of death, independent of whether or not they exercised.
- According to a 2003-2004 U.S. survey, Americans spend over half of their time awake sitting.
- In an article published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researcher Elin Ekblom-Bak found that “after four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals” that cause the genes regulating glucose and lipose levels in the body to shut down.

For one thing it really affects your blood circulation and could lead to diabetic, heart, blood pressure problems.

Spending much time in front of the desk

As a computer engineer and by night a blogger, I do have to spend much time in front of the PC. It has come to a stage where I wonder if this can be one of the contributing reasons to some of my health concerns.

Which is why I try for a few days to switch to a standing computer setup

Don’t you get tired standing up all the time?

And that is one of the primarily I quitted. It can get pretty tiring. But when I review what I did the last time round I realise that one of the main reasons I couldn’t do it is because

1. The display are not elevated till a level closer to the eyes. I am still straining my neck to view at a very far viewing angle.
2. Perhaps I didn’t want to healthy bad enough. Had I want to, I would have persevere and improve my set up.

Standing Desk Act II

I decide to go ahead and try this the second time round, and hope that my perseverance is much better this time around.

I came across Gina Trapani of Lifehacker fame’s own website with a few suggestions how to create your own standing desk.

I particularly like the second setup, as i t has 2 nice elevated boards. But knowing how impulsive and easy I will fall off some productivity bandwagon, I decide to try to see if I am used to this.

I have many financial annual reports from my interest in investing so I decide to make use of them, put them in Xerox box and together with my SilverStone CPU casing, make my standing monitor setup.

I elevate my keyboards and mouse in similar ways.

This does not look like a long term solution but it act as a good test bed to see if I can adjust to this way of doing things.

The standing posture is weird

I realize that another area that I need to overcome is standing with the right posture. Turns out even when standing up my back is still in a round shape.

The feet hurts

The first thing I notice after standing for less than 30 minutes is the heels of the feel are aching.

I learn this the first time round, and this time I decide to wear my trusty rubber slippers,

Using a Timer to incorporate some light workouts

Since you are standing up, you can make use of timer software that tells you to roll your hips every 5 minutes. This would benefit your wellness greatly I believe.

Will you switch to a standing setup?

I find that in my working culture it is difficult to request your work setup to change to a standing setup. Especially in my new office environment where everyone have a low partition and you would look weird if you are the only one standing up.

I hope that by doing this, I can see improvement in wellness and my level of energy.

If you guys have switched to a standing desk and have experience to share do send your comments here.

There are a lot of recent chatter about whether Microsoft will release MS Office for the iPad.

The iOS mindshare and market share have grown enormous and looks to be here to stay. Compare to it, Microsoft’s tablet and smartphone initiative is minute.

For Microsoft the cash cow of their business is their Windows and MS Office.

I am not sure if you notice but for a techie like myself, I can readily move to an opensource Linux platform such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Suse. I can find applications to fulfill most of my needs.

1. Personal information management apps are on the web
2. Enterprise apps are mostly on the web
3. Utilities to edit pictures, movies, watch and play media

But what stops most people from moving over is Microsoft Office. The mindshare and the network of people using it, not to mention using the DOC,XLS, PPT format is huge.

Even with free applications such as Libra Office, Open Office, Google Docs around, people will still make use of MS Office because

1. Its got a lot of value add service such as Macros and VBA that advance users cannot have on other platforms
2. Third party can create custom “Add-in” to provide a smooth working experience between their enterprise applications and the spreadsheet
3. All the people pass around documents in only DOC,XLS and PPT format
4. Even if you export to a Libra Office and Open Office or Google Docs, not all things will look the same

The Network effect and Switching cost is enormous. And Microsoft makes it work best in Windows.

The Windows network feeds the MS Office network and vice versa.

Even OS X’s Office documents may not work well with Windows’ Office!

The interesting thing is that have iOS grew so big that Microsoft is going to hedge their bet?

One thing though, is that Office sells for USD $100-200 and iOS apps that does documents, spreadsheet and powerpoint sells for less than USD $20.

This will dramatically reduce Microsoft’s cash cow.

Protect Windows revenues; protect Office revenues. Those are Microsoft’s mantras. It has put Xbox on the iPad because it extends the platform. It has put OneNote on it too because it gives it vital information about how people use the app.

Now, the challenges. To begin with, Office would compete with iWork – where buying all three apps costs a grand total of £20.97. (No missing decimal; it’s just under £21.) They can read Word, Excel and Powerpoint files, though without Office’s more advanced bells and whistles.

Office has a rather higher price. If Microsoft were to offer Office on the iPad, would it cannibalise its sales on the PC? Probably not at present – anybody who has an iPad either has a computer with Office. If they don’t, then any sale is additive.

What about further down the line? Would the iPad version take sales away from a future ABW8 version? That’s where it gets more tricky. Will iPad owners get ABW8s? Probably not in a hurry.

But: would they get them if Office were only available on ABW8s, and didn’t appear on iPads?

That’s much harder to answer. But it’s the presence of doubt – the possibility that Windows revenue might be lost by putting Office on iPads (because people wouldn’t buy ARM tablets) – which suggests to me that Office won’t appear on the iPad. If there’s the possibility that the iPad might become a platform that would threaten either of the pillars of profit, then Microsoft will shun it.

OneNote is easy to make available: it’s not core Office functionality, and it provides good feedback for the future. But despite the flurry of mobile apps from Microsoft, and those on iPad, I think that putting Office on it would be a step too far. Microsoft won’t do it – or if it does, then either the price will be astronomical, or the functionality will be severely limited. But of the three, avoidance sounds like the best alternative for preserving the business.

Lack of well design user experience

The main problem I see is a polished spreadsheet editing product on touch interface.

We have the respected QuickOffice and Documents to Go that allows you to edit XLS spreadsheets on your iPhone, Android and iPads but really there are just minimal editing apps.

The use case it utterly fail is if you are a financial analyst that have yearly data separated by years, you cannot copy wholesale the last row and duplicate it to many subsequent rows on the iPad.

The current apps are just a shell that lets you view and links to open Dropbox files. They are just not intuitive enough to handle what most financial analysts or managers require.

Beating Microsoft at their own game

I am puzzled whether QuickOffice and Documents to Go can design their apps in such a way that it is sophisticated enough to perform something like that.

Many are trying to beat Microsoft at their own game, but the mindshare is too strong.

My take is this: Any company that creates a word, excel and powerpoint alternative that allows how we do work on a desktop on a tablet on iOS can really win market share and render Microsoft in deep trouble.

iOS platform and Mac are slowly becoming the standard. The final frontier is really to incorporate great human computer interaction with what we like to use.

If you are an investor in Microsoft, this is really testing. iOS is really flourishing and it is feeding the Mac OSX. If you have an office that can flourish on IOS, it could become the standard, force Microsoft to compete on price and functionality. This could break Microsoft.

Further instructions [here]

I do consume a lot of apples. It is my fruit source since some of the fruits I cannot consume according to doctors.

The amazing thing is that I thought NTUC would sell things at cheaper affordable price

Not true. I bought 5 apples at SGD $3.25. Turns out Shop n Save sells them for SGD $2.60

Shop n Save is really budget. Although they belong under Dairy Farm which also has Cold Storage under their stable, they are consider very budget

For the use case that you need to marry calendaring and note taking specific to the context of classes you can turn to Studious for Android

Android Market [Link]

Price: Free

Organize your classes

Enter your class details

Enter your notes

The fundamental flaw of Studious is that it does not sync with One Note or Evernote. If you want to keep your notes for long term there should be some integration there.